The card sorting session yesterday with the Area Health Service went well, and generated some good results. The high-level structure of the intranet has already been identified as one of the two biggest barriers to usage (the other being the search engine), so all eyes were on the results of the session.

Of course, this will hopefully be the first of several card sorting sessions, with additional sessions including other primary user groups: clinical staff, admin, etc.

The main menu items they came up with were:

About us

Management systems

Projects & reports

News & events

Procedures, policies, guidelines & forms

Staff development and recognition

Units & services

Safety

Links

They also added two extra main menu items, to provide additional ways of finding information targeted at specific user groups:

Clinical

Admin

The session was a lot of fun as usual. Interestingly, the group was very egalatarian, with all participating equally. They walked away feeling pretty satisfied with themselves, and I think this will be the talk of the corridors for the next few days.

We started preparing for this at about 10am, and had the categories prepared and cards written (including a quick bite of lunch), by the time the users arrived at 1:30. They finished up by about 3pm, leaving us a small amount of time to prepare for the usability testing next week.